The gunman held following the attack on a synagogue in the German city of Halle has admitted responsibility and claimed he acted from far-Right motives, prosecutors said on Friday.
Stephan Balliet gave a “very extensive” confession in an interrogation that lasted several hours, a spokesman for federal prosecutors said.
The 27-year-old told interrogators he wanted to commit a massacre and inspire others to acts of anti-Semitic violence.
Balliet attempted to break into a synagogue packed with worshippers marking Yom Kippur while live-streaming his attack on the internet on Wednesday.
When he failed to gain entry to the synagogue, he shot dead two random strangers before being captured by police.
“It would be nonsense to deny he did it,” Hans-Dieter Weber, Balliet’s lawyer, told German television. “In his world view, he blames others for his own misery, and that was ultimately the trigger for this action.”
Mr Weber described his client as “intelligent and well spoken” but “socially isolated”.
ANDREAS SPLETT/AFP
Police currently suspect Balliet was radicalised online and acted alone. Investigations continue into the possibility he had help, but so far no evidence of accomplices has been uncovered, prosecutors said.
Police found a 3D printer they suspect Balliet may have used to build his homemade guns during a search of a room he used at his father’s flat in Helbra, near Halle, yesterday (FRI).
Balliet was carrying four homemade guns during his attack, including a 9mm submachine gun built to the designs of a British pro-weapons activist.
An earlier search of the 27-year-old’s room at his main home — he lived most of the time with his mother in another village near Halle — suggested he had cleaned away all traces of preparations for the attacks.
Police found a number of pieces of paper hidden around the room with the word “rivets” written on them, in what is assumed to be an attempt to mock investigators.
Meanwhile it emerged that the synagogue Balliet targetted had been fortified against attack — measures which probably saved the lives of the 51 people inside.
The main door had been strengthened and security cameras installed using a grant from from a fund set up the Jewish Agency for Israel, the world’s largest Jewish non-profit organisation, in the wake of shootings at a Jewish school in France in 2012.
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